Notes

Here's the story of the road to the Digital Watkins Glen Tree.



This was supposed to happen two years ago in conjunction with the

25th Anniversary Watkins Glen Analog Tree. I won't bore you with the

details, but the digital end never happened. A few months ago, I

had decided that I would finally have my AUD Analog seeds from the

Analog Tree transferred to DAT so that the digital world could

finally get it's hands on the tree that was run back in 1998. In a

wonderful cosmic twist of fate, on the very day that I put my

precious seed tapes in the mail to go to a trusted A>D person, I got

word that the a digital copy of the Master Soundboard Reels from

7/28/73 was going to be headed in my direction. Wow!



I had a few conversations with Dick Latvala when I was organizing the

25th Anniversary Tree and he had told me that the SBDMR was filled

with gremlins and glitches, and would never be suitable for official

release, but it did exist and he had listened to it. Most of his

friends had told him the show sucked (FOOLS!) so he didn't pay much

attention when he did listen to it. It seemed that the SBD was

destined to gather dust in the Vault for good. So be it. As it was,

we had put together a very enjoyable copy of the complete show from

AUD and FM sources and treed out what went on to change people's

minds about a show that was always thought to be a true low point in

1973. All the folklore-ish rumors about how bad they played, and how

without life the show was were put to rest. I still believe that the

bad rap given to 7/28/73 in the past stemmed from the atrocious

partial AUD that had circulated for years.



The SBD arrived and blew my mind. The main problem was that a few

songs were missing entirely from the copy. But that would be

overcome by the sources I used for the first Watkins Tree (more in a

moment). The gremlins and glitches consist mainly of occasional pops

or clicks over both dates and a static noise over much of the

recording on 7/28. It is at times a slight distraction, while at

other times barely audible. It really isn't that distracting from

the music at all. Just a little crackling here and there. However,

there is a portion of glitching that does get a bit rough. The worst

of it comes during the He's Gone>Truckin' where there are some severe

buzzes and grounding noises. These get pretty bad for sure. It

sounds like some cables are loose and a soundman is trying to rectify

the problem time and time again. But when you compare these SBD

problems during the He's Gone>Truckin' to the AUD used on the first

tree where we get to listen to the taper's buddy ponder his need to

go to the bathroom against never finding his way back to his spot in

the crowd during the same stretch of songs, I'd say it becomes a bit

of a toss up. The severe glitches clear up at about the six minute

mark of Truckin' and it's relatively smooth sailing thereafter.

This, coupled with a few cuts here and there within a few songs (like

a small chunk of vocals missing from Eyes Of The World), rounds out

most all that is wrong with the SBD. Also worth noting is that you

will discern some recording level discrepancies from tape source to

tape source. This was confirmed with the person that I had create

the complete show seeds as unavoidable when he compiled the masters.

He dealt with them as best he could (Soundforge, etc..)



As for the songs that were missing entirely from the copy I received,

I will give you all the information I have. I contacted the person

who "held" the SBD out of the Vault to find out why these songs were

missing. He informed me that they were indeed on the MR, but

suffered from tremendous tape speed problem. So bad in fact, that he

opted not to transfer them to the copy that made its way into

circulation. This lead me to uncover and at the same time solve a

real mystery. The facts now seem to indicate that what was used on

the first tree as SBD, was in fact from the fabled FM broadcast of

the whole show.



As any of you who have copies of the show treed in 1998 know, the

first 40 minutes of the show came from a SBD/5 seed. Within this

first 40 minutes are two of the songs that could not be transferred

from the SBDMR due to speed troubles: Here Comes Sunshine and Looks

Like Rain. Neither of these songs exhibit any pitch problems at all,

and further, they exhibit none of the static noise that prevails over

what we have from the SBDMR. Thus, I can only surmise that this

chunk that was used on the first tree actually emanated from the

allusive FM broadcast made on 7/28/73; the tape for which we scoured

many a local radio station in search of, all in vain.



When I had in my hands all five of the different source tapes for the

first tree back in the summer of 1998, I transferred each one to DAT

with the help of a DAT taper buddy of mine. We made two complete DAT

copies of everything involved. One set was sent to the person who

was to assemble and edit together the Digital Tree, the other was

just packed away at my DAT friend's house. It was this second set of

DATs that I was able to pull out for use on this tree. Since no

fancy splicing and editing was going to be needed for this new tree,

we were able to go right to these DATs to fill the gaps in the SBDMR.

So everything used here that did not come from the SBDMR is actually

one generation cleaner that even the Seed tapes I made to run the old

tree. It should be noted that the Encores were not to be found on

the MR at all. In fact, E2 occurred some nine hours after the Dead's

show that day, so it makes sense that the Reels were not still

sitting there ready to roll.



The job of editing all of this together fell to a person who shall

remain nameless, but he needs to be thanked none the less. He shares

my incredibly overbearing sense of detail when it comes to doing this

sort of thing, and since I personally am not set up to do anything

digitally myself, I needed someone like that in my camp. First off,

his cross fade addition of the Bill Graham intro into Bertha sounds

even better than the one I did on the Analog Tree. I almost wept

tears of joy when I first got the discs back from him, and that was

just in the first thirty seconds of the show. I didn't even think

he'd go that extra mile with the discs, but he did. Every track ID

is pure perfection. This guy is nothing short of the best DAT>CD

person I've ever encountered. You will all be very pleased.



That pretty well rounds out the story of how this tree came to be.

If I think of more tidbits I'll toss them out to you all. Thanks for

listening.



Noah



--

Subject: Watkins Story pt2

Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 23:34:57 EDT

From: Nbw000@aol.com

To: dankstar@mediaone.net



Here is another post I made that gave the history of the first tree, and all

that went into the birth of this idea...



Noah



-------------------------------------------------------------



From: Noah Weiner

Date: Thu Mar 9, 2000 11:58pm

Subject: More of the Watkins Tree Story



I went looking through old e-mails and I found a copy of a post I

sent to the Compendium mail list after being approached for more info

on the tapes used for the first tree.



I just copied the whole thing. I didn't feel like editing or

updating any of it. This will confirm that I am all and more of the

overly compulsive taper freak that many of you know me to be. After

reading it, I can honestly say I sound a bit "obsessed."



This comes from around August 1998:



------------------------------------------------



A member or two of the Compendium Mail List expressed some interest

in just how Gordon Gullahorn and I managed to get the tapes together

for the recent Watkins 25th Anniversary Tree. So, if you'll pardon a

bit of rambling on, here it is.



As many of you know, this show has only circulated in really bad Aud

quality. The tapes are always incomplete, and of unknown generation.

They have this horrendous wow and flutter all over the best parts of

set two, and really leave the listener saying "Is that a good show

under there? Well, I'll never know because I can't bear to listen to

it again!" If you have a copy, you know what I mean. If you don't

have a copy, you don't want one. Anyway, there was this discussion

going on at rmgd about this "rare gem" of a show back in February, I

think (I guess some people *had* listened again). I piped in because

I had just come across this show on some one's list who had the Aud

listed as a 2nd gen. I had NEVER seen a known gen at all, let alone

2nd. So having set up the trade, I told the folks in the thread at

rmgd that I'd be happy to spin it for anyone if it was any good once

I got it. Another person in the thread, Gordon Gullahorn, and I

started talking about doing a tree if it was really good. After all,

the 25th Anniversary was coming up, and the show hardly circulated.

It would be fun if the tapes merited doing a tree.



A little time passed and the tapes came and, yes, they were good.

Let's put a few qualifiers on this "good" here. The taper, at that

time still a mystery, was certainly near the stage, lending a nice

presence to the music. It wasn't the best 1973 Aud I had ever

gotten, but I was perfectly happy to give these tapes a fair amount

of latitude given the circumstances surrounding the recording

conditions, size of the crowd, and what else there was circulating on

tape from the show. Even with the various audience nuances -- every

kind you can think of from the guy yelling HELLO into the mic at the

start of Eyes, to the off time clapper and the off key singer -- the

tapes still left my jaw on the floor because the show was so

terrific, and when the band was jamming the crowd into silence, the

sound quality was truly quite fine. Gordon and I set about trying to

track up the gen line to the original taper, as well as dig up the

rest of the show. The Aud/3 I had was not the whole show, only the

end of set one, and most of set two. The first problem was that Andy

(the guy with the Aud/2) couldn't remember who he got the show from.

Gordon and I started posting around, but it felt like looking for a

needle in a haystack. After many fruitless posts at rmgd, DNC, etc.,

I was prodding Andy's memory some more and he said that he remembered

getting the show from the taper himself and that he thinks he met

this guy in one of the AOL Dead chat rooms. He said the guy was very

friendly and would probably come right out of the wood work for us if

we asked around. Well, the thought of sticking my head in AOL's 710

Ashbury chat room like some private detective held little charm for

me. For every good soul in there you have fifteen or twenty people

that make the experience more like drinking a warm beer at a high

school party. We seemed to be destined to come up empty. We also

found that more often than not, any time we thought we had a good

lead, it would fizzle away, or get off track. Gordon and I agreed

that there was some strange mystique shrouding this show.



I can't really recall just how the idea struck me, but I started

putting 2 and 2 and probably 7 together and thought it could be this

guy Bill Degen who I have been trading with for well over a year. He

was an East Coast taper at the time, and I had gotten a few of his

shows in the past. he did have an AOL address and the friendly

personality. He fit the bill (no pun intended). Bill couldn't

remember this Andy guy, but he identified all the unique crowd noises

on the tape as coming from the tapes he made at the show. Bingo!

And once I got his personal tapes (his original masters burned in a

house fire back in the 80's so these are copies he personally made

some time back, bless him!), the stuff sounded even better than my

copy that was 2 gens removed. So everything that goes MC>R>seed and

MC>C>seed is from him. he also provided the Mountain Jam and JBG

encore (unknown, low gen SBD).



Now Gordon and I were cooking. But because Bills tape recorder

suffered from a faulty battery cable, we were still short most all of

set one. Sure we had the crappy Audience that goes around, but that

wasn't worthy of comprising almost 40% or the treed tapes. We

thought maybe we'd just tree the stuff from Bill and leave it at

that. Then Gordon uncovered a SBD/6 copy of the first 40mins of the

show. Thanks to some still functioning brain cells, or at least good

note taking on Jeff Tiedrich's part, we were able to track another

generation off that tape. Eric Doherty happily sent me his SBD/5

copy for use on the tree. That was as far up the generational line

we could climb before the source of the next gen up had been

forgotten. We think this might be a bit of the fabled FM broadcast

that, despite many an e-mail and inquiry on Gordon's part to East

Coast radio stations, never surfaced for us. On the subject of the

SBD, I've had a few e-mail exchanges with Dick Latvala on the subject

of the tapes of 7/28/73 in the Vault since starting the tree last

week. He said he pulled out the reels some six months back, and due

to some technical problems with the tapes, they left him with a less

than glorious impression of the show itself. Though he said he's

willing to give them another listen, I wouldn't think they'd be

making it out of the Vault any time soon. The tunes that were not

seeded from Bill's or Eric's tapes come from the three or so copies

of the show Gordon and I kept trading for while looking for a good

copy. But having listened to them all to find the best one, I can

say for sure that all of these come from the same original, crappy

tapes.



The assembly of the seeds was a bear. And I don't envy Gordon's task

of doing it all over with his DATs. As it happened we decided to do

an Analog Only and a DAT Only tree for the show. Work, life and the

like kept us from meeting the actual anniversary of the show with

both trees. Since I had all the masters here, I thought it would be

nice to do a large tree that had no DATing in the generational line.

Kind of unique these days. Gordon's DAT tree will get rolling soon.

There are some half a dozen or more spots where Bills tapes were

missing things (the start of Big River, end of IKYR, the second verse

of Playin' etc, etc...). So I did a LOT of editing and pitch

adjustment. It took about three full days worth of time to get them

just right. I've got an old Nak deck that makes completely

undetectable splices, so it became a challenge to do it all well,

since no one would hear the edits, just the quality *of* the edits.

Now I didn't kill myself doing it. Some of the cuts are not

perfection on earth, but I'm just crazy enough to have done them over

and over enough to get everyone who listens to say "Ahhhhh...." And

when you start to think that each edit represents a point on the

originals where there was a bummer of a cut, you can't help but

smile. The Analog tree ended up with over 180 people on it, and most

of the ten first gen from seed tapes have been sent off already. So

if your on the tree, the show's a-comin'. And if you're not, it

shouldn't be too hard to track down in a few weeks time. Once the

DAT tree happens, it will spread all the more.



Here is how the show went down onto the seed tapes. The gens listed

are that of the seeds themselves:



Tape One:

Bertha thru LL Rain - sbd/6

Jack Straw, Deal - unknown aud

Row Jimmy, Playin' - master cassette>reel>cassette



Side A:

Bill Graham intro

Bertha

Beat It On Down The Line

Brown Eyed Women

Mexicali Blues

Box of Rain

Here Comes Sunshine

Looks Like Rain



(Bill Graham intro and start of Bertha

spliced from aud/?)



Side B:

Row Jimmy

Jack Straw

Deal

Playin' in the Band



(splice in Row Jimmy after

opening bars. First verse is missing.

Second verse thru third chorus of Playin'

spliced from aud/?.)



Tape Two:

Around, Lucy - unknown aud

Big River thru Sugar Mag - aud master cassette>cassette2



Side A:

Around and Around

Loose Lucy

Big River

He's Gone>

Truckin'>

Nobody's Jam>

El Paso



(start of Big River spliced

from aud/?)



Side B:

China Cat Sunflower>

I Know You Rider

Stella Blue

Eyes of the World>

Sugar Magnolia



(end of IKYR spliced

from aud/?)



Tape Three:

Encore One - aud master cassette>cassette2

Encore Two - unknown sbd

07/27/73 - aud master cassette>reel>cassette



Side A:

Encore One:

Sing Me Back Home(cut)

Encore Two:

Not Fade Away

Mountain Jam

Johnny Be Goode



(Encore Two with Allman Brothers Band

and The Band)



Side B:

Filler: 07/27/73 Aud

Watkins Glen Sound Check

Jam>

Wharf Rat

Me and My Uncle



(Jam is cut when taper is busted by

a roadie. Aud picks up again at the

start at Wharf Rat. The missing portion

is supplied by SBD>D>cass>seed)



Thanks for listening,



Noah Weiner (nbw000@a...)